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For eight months, he spied on her,

fitted an electronic tracker
to her car,

assaulted her,
and had broken into her home.

MAN: Shana Grice, 19.

She's gone to police,
asking for protection.

But she'd been left
to defend herself.

Shana Grice was fined £90
for wasting police time,

when she was the victim.

In this programme,
the secret audio tape.

Shana's desperate plea
to her stalker.

This is a murder taking place
in slow motion.

And the moment the killer
ran out of excuses.

Reconstructing official testimony,

court records, and speaking
to people close to the case,

this is the story of a young woman
terrorised to her death...

This was a step too far.

Something had to be done.

...and a system that failed her.

So, overall, she was let down, yes.

(SEAGULLS CALLING)

MAN: It was the hottest day
of the year.

Beautiful day, crowds on the beach.

The kind of day that makes
Brighton and Hove the place it is.

The upcoming bank holiday weekend is
set to be the busiest of the summer.

WOMAN: It was packed,
lots of holiday makers.

Lots of people enjoying ice creams.

But then, an emergency call
comes in.

(SIRENS WAILING)

We got word
that there were, um, police cars

at an address
in Mile Oak in Portslade,

at the western-- northwestern
end of Brighton and Hove.

You went from happy seafront
with lots of people,

and the atmosphere just changed,
really.

I went up into a residential estate

to police cordons,
neighbours visibly upset.

Neighbours had reported
seeing smoke rising from a house.

MAN: I pulled up just
at the bottom of the road,

and as soon as I got here,

the place was completely
cordoned off by tape.

Um, there are police forensic teams
up and down the road,

and residents
just outside their homes,

obviously in shock,
and some even in tears.

There is absolute chaos,

police all over the streets,

and that's really when I knew that,

you know,
something bad had happened.

Inside, the body of a 19-year-old
woman is discovered.

Her name, Shana Grice.

FLORA: A knife, a kitchen knife
was missing from the kitchen.

Well, after speaking
to one of Shana's friends,

she told me that Shana had her
throat slit

and her body set on fire.

And the word had got around
on the street as well.

This is a very, very quiet village,

so something of this magnitude
happening is completely unheard of.

Um, in fact, I actually
grew up a stone's throw away.

Local suspicions pointed to one man.

FLORA: Shana Grice
had been bothered by someone

neighbours were labelling
immediately as a stalker

for-- for some time.

Michael Lane was arrested
within hours,

held in the cells overnight

and questioned the next day.

As detectives began to build
their case against Lane,

they quickly realised that there
would also be difficult questions

for their own colleagues
in Sussex Police.

Shana's case
is not an isolated case,

and I am sick
of hearing about women

who have made complaints
to the police,

and they've not been listened to,
they've not been believed,

and then they've ended up
being killed

by the person that they've made
complaints against.

FRANK: Shana Grice sounded,
like a charming and vivacious

um, you know,
bright young teenager.

Shana was raised by her mother
and stepfather as an only child

in Hove, near Brighton.

She attended a local school
and left aged 16.

Her social media profile reflects
a normal, fun-loving teenage girl

who loves TV reality shows,
boy bands, birthday parties

and shared photographs with her
group of friends and cousins.

FLORA: Friends described her

as the kind of mama bear
of the friend circle,

so, always looking out
for everyone, helping each other,

and, just seemed to be a very
fun-loving, friendly young girl.

In summer 2015, Shana started work
at this fire alarm firm.

The receptionist, whose
friendly face greeted customers.

Soon, she attracted the attention of
the company mechanic, Michael Lane.

FLORA: Michael Lane was a few years
older than Shana Grice,

and they seemed to become
friendly quite early on.

But few knew the truth
about Michael Lane.

He was close to a breakdown.

He spoke to his local priest.

Michael was quite a--
a sort of a blokish guy.

He was quite a big, stocky fella,

and he had a very
sort of deep, booming voice.

Um... and, yet there was
a real gentleness to him,

as far as I was concerned.

Um, I-- I kind of understood

that most of the issues
he had were through grief.

He'd lost members of his family,
and I think his granddad dying

had been very, very impactful
on his-- on his life.

Um, and he talked about how to cope
with those kind of grief emotions.

I was obviously concerned,
initially, about him.

I was told he'd tried
to take his own life.

Um, I did check
that he was receiving

medical attention,
medical treatment,

and he said he was speaking
to his GP regularly,

so I thought, "That's great,
that's the--

"You know, the issues there are
being dealt with medically."

There was no hint
of the obsessive nature

that Lane was now showing
towards Shana.

He would pay her
a lot of attention at work,

and I think to many, uh, including
Shana, from what we've learned,

that it was something
that was fairly innocent,

but, um, maybe perhaps a bit more
persistent than she had hoped.

His persistence was not unusual.

It actually came out
that he had stalked and harassed

12 other young women
between 2006 and 2016.

Ellie May was one of those young
women targeted by Michael Lane.

He'd send me pictures
of my bedroom window,

um, as if he's, you know,
sitting outside my house,

and he'd send me a picture
and say, "I can see you,"

and I'd look out my window
and he'd be there

sat outside in his van.

I'd shut all my blinds.
I'd make sure my doors were locked.

One of the messages
I did get from Mike

was asking me if I'd stay
in a hotel with him for a night

if he booked a room
and he paid me £500.

He would-- that if I would let him
do what he wanted to do to me,

which was probably
one of the most--

scariest messages
I'd had from him,

because if I--
if I'd have gone, and met him,

I don't know
what could have happened.

And that's the most chilling part
of it all,

because it could have been her,
and there's been--

there's 11 other girls
just like her

who have probably got
the same experiences,

and, you know,
it could very well have been them.

There's a pattern of behaviour
towards women

who he was in a relationship with,

or perceived himself
to be in a relationship with,

um... and so I think there's a--

there's a time
when you have to say,

"Was this behaviour
always going to culminate

"in this destructiveness
that it culminated in?"

That's somebody-- A young girl's
life was taken, um,

because of somebody
who couldn't accept no,

or couldn't accept rejection.

None of this was known
publicly at the time.

Against an obsessive stalker,
Shana Grice would be on her own.

At a local fire alarm company,
the receptionist, Shana Grice, 18,

has been secretly dating the office
mechanic, Michael Lane, aged 26.

It's the start of a series of events
that will end in Shana's murder.

Forensic psychologist Kerry Daynes
advises the government and agencies

on how to tackle stalking,

and has closely studied
the Shana Grice case.

KERRY: We've got Shana,
she's starting out in life,

she's got her first job,

she's moved in with some friends
who she's sharing her home with,

and this is the beginning
of her life, isn't it?

But she hasn't got a lot
of life experience,

and so she would look at somebody
like Michael Lane and think

that actually he is somebody that
she could possibly learn from.

From the start, Michael Lane
pressured Shana

to finish with
her long-term boyfriend,

and started to buy her gifts.

So we've got somebody
who is much older than Shana,

so he's eight years older.

That means a lot
when Shana's only 18.

And he is pursuing her,

and I'm sure that she felt
that this was very romantic,

but it's the beginning of somebody

actually trying to control you
and coerce you.

Secretly they dated over
the next few months,

but after a Christmas party in 2015,

Shana called off the relationship.

He would become jealous easily.

They were rowing a lot.

FRANK: Once she began to try
to extricate herself

from that relationship with him,

he began a pattern of behaviour

which could only be described
as stalking, obsessive.

It was Shana's 19th birthday,
and the start of her torment.

Though Shana had returned
to her long-term boyfriend,

she received a birthday bouquet
from Michael Lane.

He knew that these flowers
were unwanted,

and the important thing is that
she felt threatened by it.

So she is putting
those flowers together

with other parts
of Michael Lane's behaviour

that she finds disturbing.

She's joining the dots.

So what seems like an innocuous,
really innocent,

maybe even pleasant
bunch of flowers

is something far more sinister.

They didn't change Shana's mind.

She was staying with her boyfriend,
Ashley Cooke.

Then things turned more serious.

FRANK: Michael Lane would
let down Shana Grice's tyres,

uh, or slash her tyres,

and then present himself
as her white knight,

coming to replace the tyre for her,
replace the wheel for her

uh, to try to put himself
in a good light.

Lane had already targeted
Ashley Cooke's car.

FRANK: Michael Lane
vandalised the car.

He also left a message
telling him that

"Shana will always cheat on you."

(SEAGULLS CALLING)

Now, Shana made her first complaint
about Michael Lane to Sussex Police.

I don't really know
how to start this conversation,

but I think I'm being stalked.

The police call handler, named
as Ms A in an official review,

said she could feel Shana's fear.

But she just wanted
Lane to be warned off.

She didn't want anyone
to lose their job over this,

and she just wanted him spoken to.

She just wanted him
to leave her alone

and not to contact her again.

Ms A telephoned Lane and warned him
to keep away from Shana.

One month later, an office party.

Shana left early.

Later, her two flatmates headed home,
taking Michael Lane with them.

FLORA: Shana wasn't at all happy

about the fact
that he'd come back to the house,

so she decided to leave,

and he followed her out
of the house and up the road,

and they began to argue again.

FRANK: He tried to snatch
her phone from her hand

to see who she'd been messaging.

FLORA: Lane became very angry,

and he pulled the phone
away from her head.

FRANK: And in the course of trying
to grab her phone, uh, hit her.

KERRY: Now, at this point,
we can see

that we've got
the beginnings of violence.

This is an assault,
it's a common assault,

and she's well within her rights
to make a complaint, as she does.

Shana had been texting
her boyfriend Ashley.

She ran to his house.

Seeing her panic-stricken,
Ashley's parents persuaded Shana

the police should be called.

PC Trevor Godfrey
took a statement from Shana

in front of Ashley and his parents.

She confirmed what had happened,

but did not mention her on-off
relationship with Michael Lane.

Lane admitted the assault, but then
gave PC Godfrey a fuller story.

KERRY: He says, "Oh, no, no,
just a minute.

"Myself and Shana are
in a relationship,"

and he shows him a series
of text messages between the two.

And it's clear
from the text messages

that yes, there has been
a relationship between them,

and the police just assume, then,
that this is a lover's tiff.

What they don't do
is they don't acknowledge

that you can be in an on and off
relationship with somebody

and still feel frightened, and
still be the victim of stalking.

PC Godfrey's evidence
to an internal disciplinary hearing

revealed his thinking about Shana.

She had wasted my time, and that
is what the inspector said.

She cannot get away
with wasting police time.

Shana had totally misled me
and told me lies.

I really don't comprehend

why the police
assumed that Shana was a liar -

because she hadn't lied, she'd
simply admitted part of the truth -

and why they took Lane
at face value.

Tom Milsom investigated
PC Godfrey's actions

for the Independent Office
of Police Conduct, the IOPC.

I was a little bit shocked around
the approach this officer took

in interview with us.

We often have officers who actually

don't want to say very much to us
at all about the incident,

um, and others will, you know,
approach it in a--

in a more, uh, balanced way

to explain what they thought
was the situation,

and perhaps reflect on potential
mistakes they've made.

But not with-- Not PC Godfrey.

She had been in an active
relationship with Lane

for six months.

`There was nothing there
to make me think

she was in any type of danger
whatsoever.

If I had any worry
that Shana was in any danger,

I would have given
her safety advice.

He was very defensive,
his attitude was one of,

"Absolutely not, I got it right,
she lied to me.

"That was wasting police's time."

It's a very minor assault.
And then you bring in the fact

that the witness is actual fact
proven to be a liar.

The incident as a whole
is basically,

she has portrayed a completely
misleading account to police,

which has been fully investigated.

He hadn't thought of it
as a serious incident.

He saw it as a minor assault,

and not enough pattern of ongoing
behaviour, which it was.

And precisely where
and how PC Godfrey

had interviewed Shana
was criticised.

He went and took the statement

in front of a current boyfriend
and his family,

and-- and that really
isn't good practice at all.

You know, she was describing some,

you know, very personal matters
to him,

and I think Shana found herself
in quite an embarrassing situation.

Uh, so that statement, um,
ended up being a problem,

because the officer went away
from there with a particular view

that wasn't, uh, a view that...

Perhaps Shana, if she'd been
interviewed alone

would perhaps have been
more forthcoming

around some of the detail

that would have perhaps raised
more concerns for the officer.

He then interviewed,
um, Lane himself,

and decided that what Lane said to
him was persuasive when it wasn't.

What we've got here is Michael Lane

has got no previous convictions,
no criminal history.

We've got the girl
who has made allegations

in which she's been found
to be lying all the way through.

TOM: It was a shocking
element of the case.

I was quite surprised by
his, um, you know, uh, belligerence

at not considering whether he
could have perhaps made a mistake

or done things better.

KERRY: And the police just assumed,
then, that this is a lovers' tiff.

What they don't do
is they don't acknowledge

that you can be in an on and off
relationship with somebody

and still feel frightened and
still be the victim of stalking.

And, in actual fact,
the fact that a relationship

had previously existed
between the two

makes the level of risk greater.

This is not harassment.

It was a smoke screen
to disguise her affair.

Anybody who is in the police force

should know how intense
relationships can get.

And intense relationships
are the relationships

that are more likely to result
in violence in the future.

So I would say was this a girl who
was placating Lane on occasions

because she was frightened of him?

Was it a girl who was just
simply out of her depth?

Was it a girl that actually
didn't know what she wanted,

because she's got this man who is
coming at her with such force?

She will be signing her texts
with five kisses.

The text messages really
aren't the important thing.

The important thing is what Shana

was saying
to the police at that time,

and she was saying that she
felt threatened, she felt scared,

she felt she was being stalked,
and she was asking for help.

Really, that's the only thing

that should have been foremost
in the office's mind at that time.

The judgement made by PC Godfrey
and his superiors was emphatic.

Michael Lane escaped with a caution.

Shana received
a fixed penalty notice.

Shana Grice was fined £90
for wasting police time,

when she was the victim.

Shana told me that she was fined

and accused of wasting police time
in regards to the incident.

She said to me
that no one believed her.

But it did happen.

And because of
the history of everything,

it looked like she was lying.

Shana also said that she could
not believe that she'd got fined,

when she was the one that got hurt
when Michael Lane pulled her hair.

Oi. Who you talking to?

Gimme the phone. Gimme the phone!

KERRY: They've made
a moral judgement about her,

which is completely unfair.

Lane, meanwhile,
spoke about the outcome

to his local priest, Andrew Birks,

who, coincidentally,
is a former policeman.

When he told me that she'd been
done for wasting police time,

there was a sense there

that he was just simply relieved
it was all over.

There was no bravado
about the fact he'd won that,

or there was no--

there was no sense that he was
sorry about that or anything,

it was just this real calm...

I got the sense he was just pleased
it had ended that way,

and, you know,
that it was all over for him.

Um, and, of course,
you know, when you're told

somebody's been given a ticket
for wasting police time,

you-- you-- you assume that
there's been a proper assessment

of why she was given that ticket.

I think this totally and utterly
dented her confidence

in being able to go to the police
with her problems,

and gave Michael Lane
the confidence to--

to carry on
his appalling behaviour.

Claudia Ortiz represents
an organisation

supporting victims of stalking.

She also sat on Brighton Council's
Domestic and Homicide Review,

and is critical of
the police's action against Shana.

CLAUDIA: I think they should
have been more careful

before making that decision,

and tried to understand if there
was something that they didn't know

that had motivated Shana
to withhold that information,

before passing a fine
on to someone,

uh, for contacting the police,

which is never an easy decision
to make for victims of any crime.

Um...

There should have been
more robust conversations

as to what was actually
going on for her,

and trying to-- to view it from
the perspective of a 19-year-old.

I think it would have completely
eroded all confidence,

because she didn't think
that the police

were going to take her seriously.

Shana Grice, aged 19,
has twice complained to police

that a stalker is troubling her.

But Sussex Police have fined Shana
£90 for wasting their time,

because she didn't disclose
her on-off relationship

with the accused man,
work colleague Michael Lane.

He escapes with a caution.

KERRY: What they're missing is,

stalking, by its very definition,
is underpinned by obsession,

so if somebody
is obsessed with somebody,

do you think that
not even a slap on the wrist,

but a quick "Don't do it again" is
really going to make a difference?

Of course it's not.

Days later, Shana quit her job

at the place where
her stalker continued to work.

FRANK: I think
she struggled to cope.

I think she struggled
to know how to deal with him.

And I think--
I don't mean it unkindly

when I say I think that she
didn't have the, if you like,

the maturity or the confidence,

and certainly not in the police,

to work out a way,
a satisfactory way forward.

In fact, within a few weeks,
as another sign of her confusion,

Shana finished
with her long-term boyfriend

and resumed her relationship
with Michael Lane.

This very dysfunctional
and very abusive relationship

is continuing
in a very sporadic way.

FLORA: But that didn't last
very long.

Um, it turned volatile
very quickly,

and that escalated,
and eventually led to her deciding

that she needed
to break up with him.

Then Michael Lane's behaviour
became more terrifying.

First, he stole the back door key

to the house Shana shared
with two friends.

Next, he broke in.

KERRY: And he stands over her while
he thinks that she's sleeping.

Can you imagine that?

All that she heard
was very heavy male breathing,

and she hides underneath the duvet
and pretends to be asleep.

The fear that she must have been
feeling at that point

is just indescribable.

She must be thinking, "Am I gonna
to be murdered in my bed here?

"Is something terrible
going to happen to me?"

When she realises
that she's alone again,

she looks out of her window

and she sees Michael Lane
leaving the property,

so she knows that it's him.

So she's got to be thinking
at this point,

"How am I ever gonna
get free of this person?

"How am I ever gonna extricate
myself from this relationship?"

I have to ask myself,
is this the point at which

he's thinking that
he's going to kill her?

Stalking is very often referred
to as murder in slow motion.

You can see the risk getting
higher and higher and higher,

and this is exactly
what we've got here.

This is a murder
taking place in slow motion.

Desperate to prove
Lane was stalking her,

Shana gathered the evidence herself.

She secretly recorded
her phone call.

This is the actual conversation.

And he is contrite,

and he's acknowledging
that he's got problems,

and he's not right in the head.

She's actually confronting
this fantasy that he's got

that these two
are meant to be together,

and that he is entitled
to this relationship,

and you can hear his voice crack.

Shana gave the recording
to the police

and tried to explain her complex
friendship with Michael Lane.

I didn't want to be in a proper
relationship,

but he kept asking until
eventually, I gave in.

But within hours, Shana discovered

Lane was again
being treated leniently.

FRANK: They spoke to Michael Lane.

He was cautioned for the theft
of her back door key.

A caution. It blows my mind.

It blows my mind that
this was not taken more seriously.

It is incomprehensible to me.

It was another
Sussex Police decision

that would be
strongly criticised by the IOPC,

because Lane's pattern
of behaviour was missed.

TOM: This was a course of behaviour
that had stepped up.

They chose, really, to look at--
to focus on the theft of a key,

and didn't really think through,

"Well, wait a minute.
Why was he in that room?

"What was he trying
to do and achieve?

"And is there a risk there
going forward?"

So again, that--
that sort of course of conduct,

um, that repeated pattern
of concerning behaviour

wasn't picked up by
that investigating officer

in relation to,
um, that investigation,

uh, and the explanations that
Michael Lane gave in interview

seemed to be accepted, um,
you know, without challenge.

Michael Lane is interviewed
for 12 minutes, that's all.

12 whole minutes,
and he's given a caution.

This is wholly inappropriate.

Anybody-- anybody looking at this
must surely realise

that this is a man with
deep psychological problems,

this is a man who is dangerous,

it's somebody
whose behaviour is escalating,

it's becoming
more and more fixated,

more and more obsessive,

more and more
moving towards something tragic.

The next day,
Shana called Sussex Police again

with a new complaint
about Michael Lane.

She'd received seven heavy breathing
calls from a withheld number.

I'm really scared.
I'm actually really scared.

(HEAVY BREATHING ON RECORDING)

Sussex Police noted the details,

but continued to treat Lane
as a low risk.

Next, Shana spotted
Lane following her.

FRANK: Michael Lane placed
a tracker on Shana Grice's car,

and it was connected to his phone.

And she'd be driving along
sometimes

and she would be able
to see him in her mirror.

Again, no further action was taken.

And then Shana received
a letter from Sussex Police

informing her the case was closed.

KERRY: There are opportunities
right from the very beginning

to intervene and save Shana's life,

and the police don't take
those opportunities.

(SEABIRDS CALLING)

The start of five days of events

that would reach
a tragic conclusion.

First, Michael Lane told a female
friend he'd been dumped by Shana.

FLORA: And as they hugged goodbye,
he whispered to her,

"She'll pay for what she's done."

Lane asked Shana
to see him one last time.

The prosecution would later claim
this was a form of blackmail.

KERRY: Lane persuades Shana
to go to a hotel with him,

and he does this by saying,

"Look, this will be our final
encounter, if you like,

"this will be the end
to our relationship.

"I will think of it as closure."

FRANK: He's got material
on his phone,

uh, that, yeah, would mess up her
relationship with Ashley Cooke,

who she was now seeing again.

I think he put her in a corner,
really, and made--

you know, made her feel
like she had little other choice,

but actually, if she did what he
said, he would be out of her life.

Now, you might think, "How on Earth
would she be prepared to do this?"

but you've got to appreciate
how ground down she is

by this situation at this point.

And you've got to appreciate
how she might want to placate him,

and she might really believe that,

"If I do this for him,
he might just leave me alone."

So she probably goes
out of desperation.

FRANK: Michael Lane
had bought petrol

from a local supermarket forecourt,

and had gone to the house.

Lane took a knife
from Shana's kitchen,

entered her bedroom
and slit her throat.

He used the petrol to start a fire
to destroy any evidence.

Shortly afterwards,
local priest Andrew Birks

was standing outside his church.

ANDREW: And I looked
and saw Michael Lane,

and he turned
and looked towards me,

caught my eye, put his head down,
and literally sort of sped up

and sort of, effectively,
walked really quickly off.

And I just remember thinking,
"Well, that's a bit weird."

He sort of was, effectively,
I thought,

"Pretend you hadn't seen me."

Later came the explanation.

Somebody had messaged me
and said, oh, had I seen him?

And I said, "I did
briefly see him this morning."

And then they sort of text...

they text back saying, "Oh,
he's wanted for murder,

"the police are looking for him."

(LAUGHS) "What?"

And, um, I said,
"When did that happen?"

They said, "This morning."

The next day,
Michael Lane was questioned.

KERRY: When you reflect
on the entirety of this story,

what is so tragic about it

is how preventable
Shana's death was.

After Shana Grice
was found murdered,

police arrested Michael Lane
immediately.

FRANK: He feigns ignorance.

"Absolutely nothing to do with me,

"Don't know anything about it,
wasn't there."

But Lane hadn't thought about CCTV.

Supermarket cameras had captured him
filling up a can of petrol

the day before Shana died.

FRANK: The buses in Brighton
all have CCTV on.

They filmed him close
to Shana's house the next morning.

He left a-- a trail of evidence.

After murdering Shana,

Lane used her bank card
to draw £60 from her account.

He changed his shirt and shorts.

In his bag, the clothes
stained with Shana's blood.

Found at the scene,
a bloody footprint.

In nearby bushes, Lane's trainers.

And under Shana's car, the tracking
device Lane had secretly fitted.

Eight days after Shana's murder,

Michael Lane's
seventh police interview,

the evidence against
him overwhelming.

He completely changes his story,

because he has to because
of the evidence against him.

And he comes up with something
that is so ridiculous.

He saw her dead and he panicked,

and so he didn't check
her vital signs,

he didn't call 999.

Michael Lane's not guilty plea

would mean more agony
for Shana's family

when the case reached
the Crown Court.

I think the family could be
forgiven for thinking

that Shana Grice was on trial,

for her choices,

for having had her head
turned by Michael Lane,

for not knowing how
to extricate herself

from a-- a very toxic relationship.

After a two-week trial,

the jury took just over two hours

to convict Michael Lane of murder.

Michael Lane,
the jury has found you guilty

of the murder of Shana Grice.

You killed Shana
by slitting her throat.

You set fire to her room,
intending her body

and the scene of the crime
to be burned beyond recognition.

There is only one sentence
that, in law,

I am allowed to impose upon you,

and that is imprisonment for life.

The judge also criticised
the actions of Sussex Police.

The police jumped to conclusions,

and Shana was stereotyped.

Michael Lane felt that,
if he continued

with his obsessive
stalking behaviour,

it was most unlikely the police
would do anything to stop him.

And he did continue.

Outside court, Shana's family handed
a statement to reporters.

MAN: We are very relieved

that the man
who killed our precious Shana,

our only child, will serve a long
and deserved prison sentence.

Michael Lane is a dangerous
and obsessive man.

We firmly believe
Shana would be alive today

if Sussex Police had acted
to protect Shana

on the many occasions
she complained about Lane,

rather than issue her with
a fine for wasting police time.

The actions of 14 police officers
and staff were investigated.

The most serious finding,
gross misconduct,

was upheld against PC John Mills,

who gave Michael Lane a caution
for theft of a key

after he broke into Shana's bedroom.

TOM: The panel found that he had

misconducted himself
to the gross level,

and had it been that he had not
resigned from the police

uh, a month or two previous,

he would have been dismissed
from the police.

Gross misconduct was also put
to PC Trevor Godfrey,

whose decision led to Shana's £90
fine for wasting police time.

What I can clearly say is that
he wasn't victim-focused enough.

You know,
he was not thinking through

what it means to be at the end
of a coercive relationship,

and in someone who was pursuing her
without encouragement.

At his hearing, Trevor Godfrey
continued to insist

his actions had been correct.

She had wasted my time, and
that is what the inspector said.

She cannot get away
with wasting police time.

Shana had totally misled me
and told me lies.

While the disciplinary panel said no
blame should be attributed to Shana,

it ruled this was a case
of misconduct by the officer,

not gross misconduct.

The panel felt that whilst
the failings were serious, um,

there were some mitigating
circumstances

around, uh,
why he did some of his actions

or why he didn't do other
of his actions.

Shana's family issued an angry
statement after the hearings.

MAN: We can barely believe
what we've witnessed

these past two days.

The panel allowed a wholesale
character assassination

of our daughter, who's obviously
not here to defend herself.

The misconduct charge is a joke
and the hearing a sham.

Sussex Police apologised,
and held a thorough review

of how officers deal with complaints
of stalking and harassment.

For Sussex Police and Crime
Commissioner Katy Bourne,

Shana's death showed
change was urgently needed.

KATY: For me, it was just--
this was a step too far.

Some-- something had to be done.

She asked for help and, um--
and the help wasn't there.

And she wasn't heard,
and her case wasn't looked at.

And when you look at
some of the incidents

that have been reported
that happened in her case,

on their own, isolated,
they don't seem very important,

but when you join them up,
you see the pattern.

Oh, my goodness, um,
it's all there laid out.

I sat down
with the Chief Constable

and with the Heads
of Public Protection,

and we talked through, actually,
what do they need to do

to make the response
to stalking better?

Sussex Police was instructed

to have new stalking training
and improved processes

to better protect victims
from repeat offences.

And after Shana,

police officers across the country
have now been told

not to hand out fines
in stalking and harassment cases.

KERRY: When you reflect
on the entirety of this story,

what is so tragic about it

is how preventable
Shana's death was.

There were so many times
when somebody

could have intervened
to change the outcome.

There are so many times
when responsibility

should have been put on Michael
Lane's toes, not on Shana's toes,

for what he was doing and what
he was putting her through.

Somebody asked me
if I felt sorry for him,

and I-- I just feel tremendously
sad for the whole situation.

For Shana's family,

for Michael's family,
who still live in the community,

uh, and-- and yeah, you know,
for Michael himself,

because I just-- I just-- I just
wished he had talked to me

about some of the issues,

that I might have been able
to see the trigger signs.

I might have been able,
you know, given my background,

to have seen how he was coping
with, actually, the relationship.

Or if he'd just spoken
to somebody about it,

we might not be doing
this interview now,

he might not be spending time,

but he might actually
be receiving treatment

for how he deals with his emotions.

I've got two children.

One of them's a daughter
Shana's age,

and I've found myself wondering

how she would cope
in the same situation.

Whether she would have
the confidence

to confide in her friends, family,

the police,
particularly if, like Shana,

she'd been given a fixed penalty
notice for wasting police time,

merely for trying to report
something terrible

that was
happening in her life and--

and reaching out for help.

TOM: I mean, this was
a terrible tragedy, you know,

for the family of Shana Grice,

and they, you know, conducted
themselves with fantastic dignity

throughout what was
a horrific murder trial.

There were significant system and
training failures by Sussex Police.

There seemed to be
a lack of awareness

among many officers we interviewed

around the difference between
a spat between two individuals

and actually moving on to
it being harassing behaviour.

You need to, as investigators,
not to make assumptions

uh, about what's in front of you,

uh, and to take the time
to properly investigate matters,

and you really need
to listen to the victim,

and I don't think,
um, that happened to Shana.

So, overall, she was let down, yes.

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